ARTICLE ABSTRACT: The "participatory turn" cutting across technical approaches for appraising environment, risk, science, and technology has been accompanied by intense debates over the desired nature, extent, and quality of public engagement in science. Burgeoning work evaluating the...Read more
While the anthropological study of infrastructure is a fairly recent and uncommon phenomenon in Japan, there has always been a strong interest in infrastructure among Foucault-inspired urban sociologists who emphasize the way infrastructures work as apparatuses to shape and orient...Read more
ARTICLE ABSTRACT: In contested areas of environmental research and policy, all stakeholders are likely to claim that their position is scientifically grounded but disagree about the relevant scientific conclusions or the weight of the evidence. In this article, I draw on a year of participant...Read more
When environmental science acts by enlightenment rather than instrumental use, that is, by changing the aims and values of politics rather than its means, adequate communication to the general public is crucially important. Based on the study of two issues, forest death from acid rain and the...Read more
"Unreasonable expectations about the nature and character of scientific knowledge support the widespread political assumption that predictive scientific assessments are a necessary precursor to environmental decision making. All too often, the practical outcome of this assumption is...Read more
ARTICLE ABSTRACT: Science literacy is frequently touted as a key to good citizenship. Based on a two-year ethnographic study examining science in the community, the authors suggest that when considering the contribution of scientific activity to the greater good, science must be seen as forming...Read more
The Ontology of Technology : Considering the Potentiality of Natural-Cultural Anthropology through an Analysis of the Inuit Technological-Complex System (<Special Theme>New Horizon of Ethnography on Technology)
Author: Keiichi Omura
Keywords:...Read more
ARTICLE ABSTRACT: "Undone science" refers to areas of research that are left unfunded, incomplete, or generally ignored but that social movements or civil society organizations often identify as worthy of more research. This study mobilizes four recent studies to further elaborate the concept of...Read more
ARTICLE ABSTRACT: In the early 1970s, the idea of precaution "of heeding rather than ignoring scientific evidence of harm when there is uncertainty, and taking action that errs on the side of safety" was so appealing that the US Congress used it as the basis of the toxics provisions of the Clean...Read more
Kim Fortun's 2014 article is available on the website for HAU's Journal of Ethnographic Theory.
Abstract:
"I situate Latour’s latest project—An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (AIME)—in the context of late industrialism and query both its conceptual underpinnings and...Read more